There's a lot of truth to this. It seems that "populism" rises when people fear downward mobility. When the rate of change is rapid, merely remaining the same as one was (e.g., in a small farming village) can cause downward mobility. Unfortunately, such people are often correct in thinking that the "elites" and their institutions are not committed to keeping the volk above all those grotty foreigners.
Recently, I've belatedly noticed that US immigration policy has much of these features. It's fairly easy to come to the US and work as an unskilled laborer. But it's much more difficult to get "professional" work if you don't have the proper visa. So people like me get the benefits of open immigration (the landscapers I hire don't need proper papers), but not the costs (the guy competing for my job has to have proper papers).
A particularly ironic example was in the Boston Globe recently. It seems that a guy just graduated from Harvard who lived in LA since he was one. Since he has never gotten a green card, he can't get a job. But... I'll bet he's had summer jobs, and I'll bet that in LA, people hiring for low-wage summer jobs don't ask for your papers. But now that he's been elevated into the "professional" class, he can't get work.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-25 01:57 am (UTC)Recently, I've belatedly noticed that US immigration policy has much of these features. It's fairly easy to come to the US and work as an unskilled laborer. But it's much more difficult to get "professional" work if you don't have the proper visa. So people like me get the benefits of open immigration (the landscapers I hire don't need proper papers), but not the costs (the guy competing for my job has to have proper papers).
A particularly ironic example was in the Boston Globe recently. It seems that a guy just graduated from Harvard who lived in LA since he was one. Since he has never gotten a green card, he can't get a job. But... I'll bet he's had summer jobs, and I'll bet that in LA, people hiring for low-wage summer jobs don't ask for your papers. But now that he's been elevated into the "professional" class, he can't get work.